Dr. Brad Bradford, Doctor, makes house calls

Yeah the difference is way more than 3db. The vox sounds at least 20 - 30db lower.
Now it seems like we are harping on your sound. But really trying to give you info to get to the bottom of the mystery.
 
Michael, this is what I'm seeing/hearing.
http://frenchquarterfeatures.com/docsound.mov
(2 second grab with VU levels, 2.5mb)

I drug your movie into FCP, matched the clip settings for the sequence, then did a screen grab (movie) of the movie with the levels meter in the screengrab.

I made no adjustments to the levels, and then output the grab at 44.1/16 bit.

As you can see the mean vox level is living around -22 to -26db with a few peaks at -18db, way lower than the bell at the end which clips out at 0db.

I see that the file is basically mono (dual channel, but with the same thing on both channels) maybe the vox track was panned left or right and got lost when the file was mixed to mono? and again we are just getting spill? Dunno.

Sorry this is happening to what looks like an otherwise polished entry - only reason I can think of as to why you are not getting more attention - art direction for example, looks really great.
 
JDS, thanks for all the trouble you've gone to to try to help isolate the problem. I've watched your grab on two different machines and understand what you're seeing/hearing, which is way different in both the clip I uploaded as well as those I continue to download and test. In fact, I just dusted off (literally) my Thinkpad 600E, P2 machine running XP, updated QTPlayer, downloaded the spot -- audio played just fine (that processor is too slow to run the video). Also, thanks for your compliments regarding other aspects of the spot.

There does appear to be a workaround to the audio problems if you have QTPro. Go to movie properties in the Windows menu, select audio, set Channel 1 to mono and Channel 2 to unused. That works just fine on this end, but then so do all the clips I and others I've conscripted downloaded and tried. Imagine my frustration! I think I'd rather have picture woes than audio woes. This is definitely something I don't want to happen again so still working on solving the problem.

Thanks again for ALL the feedback.

Michael
 
Michael.
Do you use a mixer between your computer and your monitor speakers?
Is it possible that the vox is panned left or right in your NLE but you are hearing it center on your speakers - given that your solution involves manipulating the stereo channels, again, what people are describing as "camera mic" sounding, or "mic at the other end of room" could be a small amount of bleed from the vox track which is somehow being obscurred. Almost certain the problem lies in some weird stereo issue, especially since your fix involves discarding one stereo channel.

i will PM you if I have other thoughts on sound, don't want your thread to turn into the "sound thread". Will try your fix and give you content feedback later. Thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top